Day 2- The first time they had to watch a video for HW

I will admit, I was nervous today about them coming in prepared. I had a couple message me on Edmodo about not getting the link to work, which I tried to help but on my ipad and laptop I had no issues. For the class practice, we were finishing up a group problem from last week, and this time I gave them to finish I used to go around and look at their notes, answer their questions, and stamp their sheet. Most had them done :-) I was impressed. Those who didn't have them done were later told to get on a computer or smart device and watch them (well not 1st period- I had 2 other people come into observe me and i forgot this step with them). Those who did their notes in class, had an assignment to take home as their practice since they didn't get practice time in class. I was really please with my first 3 classes, most had done their notes. I was however discouraged by mt last class, when only 5 had done them. :-( but it ended ok, this group is my lowest performing class and having that time with them to show them how to access the notes, take the notes, and monitor them really helped and I hope they see the benefits of doing them before class. The activity today was practice problems on point slope form and writing equations of lines given the slope and a point or y intercept. I had 6 questions, but I had 2 levels of questioning. They questions were on two different colored paper, so the students didn't know they were different. I purposely grouped them according to skill level and gave them a card that told them what problem and color to go to. They rotated around and I walked around helping and clarifying things as needed. In the beginning of each class there was some wait time for some groups because I couldn't get to everyone at the same time. But they really just needed the confidence to know they were doing things right.

As a reflection of today, I like how I walk around and stamp notes, but I need to figure out a quicker way to do it so it doesn't waste so much time in the beginning. I am pleased this year so far with the positive comments and actions of my students. This is much better than my implementation last year when I did it at semester with Algebra 2 students. This hopefully is a good sign that this will be a positive change for my classes and my students performance.

They had no homework tonight, we will do whiteboard practice tomorrow over the same thing and on Wednesday I'll give them a short quiz to assess more formally.